The Opinions of the Supreme People’s Court on Comprehensively Strengthening Judicial Protection for Intellectual Property Rights were promulgated on 15 Apr. 2020.
There are 26 articles in total, which aim to guide Chinese courts to strengthen the protection for intellectual property rights.
The key points are as follows:
The purposes of strengthening the protection for intellectual property rights by Chinese courts are: (1) to show that China abides by international rules and fulfills international commitments; (2) to promote China’s economic development.
The SPC will formulate the judicial interpretation of administrative cases of patent authorization and confirmation.
The SPC will define the standards of trademark similarity in trademark infringement cases and trademark authorization and confirmation cases.
The SPC will strike a balance between the development of information network technology and the copyright protection.
The SPC will reduce the burden of proof on right holders in civil disputes of infringement of trade secrets, and clarify the standards of finding criminal acts in relevant criminal cases.
The SCP will improve the rules for infringement determination of e-commerce platforms to effectively respond to the claims of right holders on e-commerce platforms.
The SPC will crack down on crimes of infringing intellectual property rights and impose severe punishment on such crimes under specific circumstances.
The SPC will properly hear foreign-related intellectual property disputes caused by international trade and foreign investment, so as to equally protect the legitimate rights of Chinese and foreign parties.
The SPC will formulate the judicial interpretation of evidence in intellectual property civil litigation to reduce the burden of proof on the parties.
The SPC will increase the amount of infringement compensation, confiscate and destroy counterfeit or pirated goods and materials and tools mainly used for infringement according to the law, so as to effectively prevent the recurrence of infringement of intellectual property rights.
The SPC will actively construct the multilateral system of intellectual property protection and promote the formulation of new international rules.
The SPC will put more efforts into the translation and promotion of China’s intellectual property judgments.